Collective Motion

Collective motions in biological systems

Editors: Andreas Deutsch, Guy Theraulaz and Tamas Vicsek

The spectrum of biological systems exhibiting group motion is wide and includes bacteria colonies, migrating locusts, schools of fish, flocks of birds and groups of mammals (including people). Each system has its specific features and motion patterns. But if a system is made of many interacting units, then some relevant universal behaviors are expected to take place as well, bridging the gap between the aforementioned examples and making the studies of collective motion a sub-field on its own right. What are these ‘universal’ features? It turns out that the motion of, for example, fish schools or flocking birds share a lot in common; these groups of animals produce collective motion ranging from orderly through turbulent to random.

During the past decade collective motion has been the subject of a quickly growing number of investigations. An important reason for the interest in collective motion is the appearance of new, extremely efficient and informative techniques to collect data about the details of motions within a collective of organisms. The present issue of Focus Interface collects a recent series of representative studies written by widely respected authors to make this flourishing topic closer to the general readership as well as to specialists interested in the particular subject of the contributions.

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Interface is the Society's cross-disciplinary publication promoting research at the interface between the physical and life sciences. It offers rapidity, visibility and high-quality peer review and is ranked fourth in JCR's multidisciplinary category.